Читать книгу Days and Dreams: Poems - Cawein Madison Julius - Страница 3

Sad skies and a foggy rain

Dripping from streaming eaves;

Over and over again

Dead drop of the trickling leaves;

And the woodward winding lane,

And the hill with its shocks of sheaves,

One scarce perceives.

Must I go in such sad weather

By the lane or over the hill?

Where the splitting milk-weed's feather

Dim, diamond-like rain-drops fill?

Or where, ten stars together,

Buff ox-eyes rank the rill

By the old corn-mill?

The creek by this is swollen,

And its foaming cascades sound;

And the lilies, smeared with pollen,

In the race look dull and drowned; —

'T is the path we oft have stolen

To the bridge, that rambles round

With willows crowned.

Through a bottom wild with berry

Or packed with the iron-weeds,

With their blue combs washed and very

Purple; the sorghum meads

Glint green near a wilding cherry;

Where the high wild-lettuce seeds

The fenced path leads.

A bird in the rain beseeches;

And the balsams' budding balls

Smell drenched by the way which reaches

The wood where the water falls;

Where the warty water-beeches

Hang leaves one blister of galls,

The mill-wheel drawls.

My shawl instead of a bonnet!..

Though the wood be soaking yet

Through the wet to the rock I 'll run it —

How sweet to meet in the wet! —

Our rock with the vine upon it,

Each flower a fiery jet – …

He won't forget!

Deep are the lilies here that lay

Lush, lambent leaves along our way,

Or pollen-dusty bob and float

White nenuphars about our boat

This side the woodland we have reached;

Two rapid strokes our skiff is beached.

There is no path. Heaped foxgrapes choke

Huge trunks they wrap. This giant oak

Floods from the Alleghanies bore

To wedge here by this sycamore;

Its wounded bulk, heart-rotted white,

Lights ghostly foxfire in the night.

Now oar we through this willow fringe

The bulging shore that bosks, – a tinge

Of green mists down the marge; – where old,

Scarred cottonwoods build walls of shade

With breezy balsam pungent; bowled

Around vined trunks the floods have made

Concentric hollows. On we pass.

As we pass, we pass, we pass,

In daisy jungles deep as grass,

A bubbling sparrow flirts above

In wood-words with its woodland love:

A white-streaked woodpecker afar

Knocks: slant the sun dashed, each a star,

Three glittering jays flash over: slim

The piping sand-snipes skip and skim

Before us: and a finch or thrush —

Who may discover where such sing? —

The silence rinses with a gush

Of mellow music gurgling.

On we pass, and onward oar

To yon long lip of ragged shore,

Where from yon rock spouts, babbling frore

A ferny spring; where dodging by

Rests sulphur-disced that butterfly;

Mallows, rank crowded in for room,

'Mid wild bean and wild mustard bloom;

Where fishers 'neath those cottonwoods

Last Spring encamped those ashes say

And charcoal boughs. – 'T is long till buds! —

Here who in August misses May?

Here the shores are irised; grasses

Clump the water gray that glasses

Broken wood and deepened distance:

Far the musical persistence

Of a field-lark lingers low

In the west where tulips blow.

White before us flames one pointed

Star; and Day hath Night anointed

King; from out her azure ewer

Pouring starry fire, truer

Than true gold. Star-crowned he stands

With the starlight in his hands.

Will the moon bleach through the ragged

Tree-tops ere we reach yon jagged

Rock, that rises gradually?

Pharos of our homeward valley.

Down the dusk burns golden-red;

Embers are the stars o'erhead.

At my soul some Protean elf is:

You 're Simaetha, I am Delphis;

You are Sappho and her Phaon —

I. We love. There lies a ray on

All the dark Æolian seas

'Round the violet Lesbian leas.

On we drift. He loves you. Nearer

Looms our island. Rosier, clearer

The Leucadian cliff we follow,

Where the temple of Apollo

Lifts a pale and pillared fire —

Strike, oh, strike the Lydian lyre;

Out of Hellas blows the breeze

Singing to the Sapphic seas.

Night, Night, 't is night. The moon before to love us,

And all the moonlight tangled in the stream:

Love, love, my love, and all the stars above us,

The stars above and every star a dream.

In odorous purple, where the falling warble

Of water cascades and the plunged foam glows,

A columned ruin heaps its sculptured marble

Curled with the chiselled rebeck and the rose.

Sleep, Sleep, sweet Sleep sleeps at the drifting tiller,

And in our sail the Spirit of the Rain —

Love, love, my love, ah bid thy heart be stiller,

And, hark! the music of the harping main.

What flowers are those that blow their balm unto us?

Bow white their brows' aromas each a flame?

Ah, child, too kind the love we know, that knew us,

That kissed our eyes that we might see the same.

Night! night! good night! no dream it is to vanish,

The temple and the nightingale are there;

The thornless roses bruising none to banish,

The moon and one wild poppy in thy hair.

Night! night! good night! and love's own star before thee,

And love's star-image in the starry sea;

Yes, yes, ah yes! a presence to watch o'er thee —

Night! night! good night and good the gods to thee!

O simple offerings of the common hills;

Love's lowly names, that make you trebly sweet!

One Johnny-jump-up, but an apron-full

Of starry crowfoot, making mossy dells

Dim with heaven's morning blue; dew-dripping plumes

Of waxen "dog-mouths"; red the tippling cups

Of gypsy-lilies all along the creek,

Where dull the freckled silence sleeps, and dark

The water runs when, at high noon, the cows

Wade knee-deep and the heat hums drowsy with

The drone of dizzy flies; – one Samson-flower

Blue-streaked and crystal as a summer's cloud;

White violets, milk-weed, scarlet Indian-pinks,

All fragile-scented and familiar as

Pink baby faces and blue infant eyes.

O fair suggestions of a life more fair!

Love's fragrant whispers of an untaught faith,

High habitations 'neath a godlier blue

Beyond the sin of Earth, in heavens prepared —

What is it? – halcyon to utter calm,

Faith? such as wrinkled wisdom, doubting, has

Yearned for and sought in miser'd lore of worlds,

And vainly? – Love? – Oh, have I learned to live?

Would you have known it seeing it?

Could you have seen it being it?

Waving me out of the budding land

Sunbeam-jewelled a bloom-white hand,

Wafting me life and hope and love,

Life with the hope of the love thereof,

Love.

– "What is the value of knowing it?" —

Only the worth of owing it;

Need of the bud contents the light;

Dew at dawn and nard at night,

Beauty, aroma, honey at heart,

Which is debtor, part for part,

Heart?

Thoughts, when the heart is heedable,

Then to the heart are readable;

I in the texts of your eyes have read

Deep as the depth of the living dead,

Measures of truth in unsaid song

Learned from the soul to haunt me long,

Song.

Love perpends each laudable

Thought of the soul made audible,

Said in gardens of bliss or pain:

Moonlight rays in drops of rain,

Feels the faith in its sleep awake,

Wish of the silent words that shake

Sleep.

If love I have had of thee thou hadst of me,

No loss was in giving it over;

Could I give aught but that I had of thee,

Being no more than thy lover?

And let it cease. When what befalls befalls,

You cannot love me less,

Loving me much now. Neither weeks nor walls,

With bitterest distress,

Shall all avail. Despair will find reprieve,

Though dark the soul be tossed,

In past possession of that love you grieve,

The love which you have lost.

Ponder the morning, or the midnight moon,

The wilding of the wold,

The morning slitting from night's brown cocoon

Wide wings of flaxen gold:

The moon that, had not darkness been before,

Had never shone to lead;

And think that, though you are, you are not poor,

Since you have loved indeed.

From flower to star read upward; you shall see

The purposes of loss,

Deep hierograms of gracious deity,

And comfort in your cross.

Sunday shall we ride together?

Not the root-rough, rambling way

Through the woods we went that day,

In the sultry summer weather,

Past the Methodist Camp-Meeting,

Where religion helped the hymn

Gather volume, and a slim

Minister with textful greeting

Welcomed us and still expounded.

From the service on the hill

We had rode three hills and still

Far away the singing sounded.

Nor that road through weed and berry

Drowsy days led me and you

To the old-time barbecue,

Where the country-side made merry.

Dusty vehicles together;

Darkies with the horses by

'Neath the soft Kentucky sky,

And a smell of bark and leather;

When you smiled, "Our modern tourney:

Gallantry and politics

Dinner, dance and intermix."

As we went the homeward journey

'Twixt hot chaparrals and thickets,

Heard brisk fiddles, scraping still,

Drone and thump the quaint quadrille,

Like a worried band of crickets. —

Neither road. The shady quiet

Of that way by beech and birch,

Winding to the ruined church

On the Fork that sparkles by it.

Where the silent Sundays listen

For the preacher whom we bring,

In our hearts to preach and sing

Week-day shade to Sabbath glisten.

Yes, to-morrow; when the morn,

Pentecost of flame, uncloses

Portals that the stars adorn,

Whence a golden presence throws his

Fiery swords and burning roses

At the wide wood's world of wall,

Spears of sparkle at each fall;

Then together let us ride

Down deep-wood cathedral places,

Where the pilgrim wild-flowers hide,

Praying Sabbath in their faces;

Where in truest untaught phrases,

Worship in each rhythmic word,

Sings no migratory bird…

Pearl on pearl the high stars dight

Jewels of divine devices

'Round the Afric throat of Night;

Where yon misty glimmer rises

Soon the white moon crystallizes

Out of darkness, like a spell. —

Late, 't is late. Till dawn, farewell.